France Arrests Dozens of People for Hate Speech and ‘Glorifying’ Terrorism

As its citizens continue to rally around their much-celebrated right to free expression, the Associated Press reports that France has begun a “crackdown on hate speech, anti-Semitism, and glorifying terrorism.” So far, 54 people have been arrested, and some have already been punished “under special measures for immediatesentencing.”

Among those taken into custody was Dieudonné M’bala M’bal, a comedian with a history of racism and anti-Semetism convictions. (Popularizing a hand gesture that resembles a Nazi salute is one of his claims to fame.) Dieudonné was busted over a (since deleted) Monday night Facebook post in which he wrote that he felt “like Charlie Coulibaly” — a reference to the “Je Suis Charlie” slogan and Amedy Coulibaly, the terrorist who killed four people in a kosher grocery store after the Charlie Hebdo attack. In another post, Dieudonné addressed the French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, writing, “Whenever I speak, you do not try to understand what I’m trying to say, you do not want to listen to me. You are looking for a pretext to forbid me. You consider me like Amedy Coulibaly when I am not any different fromCharlie.”

A spokesperson also told reporters that in addition to the stepped-up hate-speech enforcement, the French government is “broadening” its legal ability to tap phones and use other types of intelligence-gathering methods for the purpose of detecting threats. Sound familiar?